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NSW urged to fight for Gonski funds

Premier Barry O'Farrell is under pressure to fight for billions of dollars in education funding after Tony Abbott vowed to ditch the federal government's Gonski agreement with NSW.

NSW is the only state in Australia to have signed up to the federal government's offer of a two-for-one funding deal.

It netted the state $3.27 billion in commonwealth funds over six years, with Mr O'Farrell to find savings in his own budget to round out the total funding to $5 billion.

Mr Abbott said he wouldn't follow through with the deal in his budget-in-reply speech on Thursday night, prompting Schools Minister Peter Garrett to accuse him of letting down "the entire education community".

He said budget figures showed that under Mr Abbott's plan, students would be $16.2 billion worse off over six years.

NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson has called on Mr O'Farrell to phone Mr Abbott and "fight for the funding".

"The Gonski reforms are a once in a lifetime opportunity and Tony Abbott is the only person standing in the way of this."

NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron said Mr Abbott had shown himself to be short-sighted and mean-spirited.

"I can not understand the logic in it," he told AAP.

"Parents, teachers and principals have already been contacting us to say that we cannot let Tony Abbott get in the way of this historic agreement."

Mr Mulheron pointed out that when Mr O'Farrell agreed to the deal in April he warned against "ignoring Gonski at our own peril".

"He could see the sense in it, he was prepared to put partisan politics aside and act in a bipartisan way.

"Tony Abbott's behaviour shows him to be unworthy of being called a national leader."

At a business forum in Sydney on Friday, Mr Abbott said he backed consultant David Gonski's work on national schools funding reforms but rejected Labor's funding formula.

"The genius of this government is to take something good, David Gonski's report, and completely muck it up," he said.

"What this government is doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Before it even began to seriously consider the implementation of David's report it announced it would rip $2.8 billion from higher education."